Holden wasn’t going to show.
I walked anxiously up Sixth Avenue, heading to the restaurant we’d agreed on, which was at Seventh and Fifty-Fourth. Holden worked in Brooklyn, I knew, but he’d picked this place in Manhattan because it was easier for me to get to after I left Morgan Financial. It was a gesture that was really nice of him.
He wasn’t going to show.
I was sure of it. I wasn’t usually the anxious type—I could get on stage and tap dance in front of an audience, and if you asked me to sing a solo, I’d gladly go for it. But there was no denying that when it came to this dinner, I had acid nerves in the pit of my stomach, and Holden Whittaker had put them there.
Why had I agreed to this, anyway? I should have just told him to go to hell and stay out of my life so I wouldn’t have to go through this again. But those blue eyes… and he smelled so good. And he had chest muscles. Apparently I was a sucker for chest muscles just like the ones on the covers of the romance novels I read.
At lunch today, I’d made my usual escape from Hellhound to eat my lunch and read my Kindle. I was finished More Than One Fireman, and I’d gone on to read the next in the series, Arrested by the Hot Cops. That one had been steamy, including a wild scene involving two cops, handcuffs, and the back of a squad car, which was fun to read even though I kept wondering how contaminated the upholstery of that seat must be.
But then I’d finished that one, and my kindle had suggested the third book in the series to me: Taken Hard by the EMT. I’d slapped the cover of my Kindle closed and put the thing down on the table in front of me as if it had turned into a live snake.
I wasn’t going to read that one. No way.
But I finished my sandwich, and before I could think about it I’d pulled my Kindle toward me again, opening the cover. The first thing still on my display was the cover of Taken Hard by the EMT, featuring a man in a navy blue EMT uniform, the shirt unbuttoned. He had chest muscles and rippling abs and big, wide shoulders. The cover artist had cropped his face just below the nose, so all that was visible was a gorgeous mouth and a jawline with a trace of dark scruff on it. A jawline that could easily be Holden Whittaker’s.
I clicked on the book, downloaded it to my Kindle, and opened it to the first page.
It was about a woman—a gorgeous redhead, who was a virgin and most likely weighed ninety pounds on a bad day—who was trapped in a stairwell. (There was something about locked doors that wouldn’t open.) And she feels a panic attack coming on, and she’s starting to feel faint, so she calls 911 and a few minutes later someone is banging the door open, and it’s—
I shut the cover on my Kindle again. “Nope,” I said aloud, and then I’d gone back to my cubicle to compare toner prices.
Now I had my Kindle in my purse, though I didn’t have the courage to open it. Maybe I never would again. Maybe I’d have to put it in a lead-lined safe and sink it deep into the bottom of the ocean so I wouldn’t have to think about Taken Hard by the EMT ever again. I knew it was a digital file, but maybe if I got it far enough away from me, it wouldn’t make me think of Holden, and his chest, and the way his ass had looked in those uniform pants, coming down the ladder toward me. Those were not safe thoughts at all.
I was approaching the corner of Fifty-Third and Sixth, and I could see that the light was about to change. I sped my pace to try and make it. From the corner of my eye I saw movement, but it was too late. I slammed chest-first into someone getting out of a cab at the curb.
“Oof!” I said as I stepped back. I had bumped into a suit. A very expensive suit. A suit that you might say was intimidating, terrifying, or—if you were feeling particularly brave—stuck-up. Because it was Graham Morgan’s suit. I had just bumped into the CEO of Morgan Financial.
His handsome, arrogant face looked disgusted as he brushed himself off. “Watch where you’re going.”
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Morgan.”
He looked at me again and narrowed his eyes as he realized I’d call him by name. He really was terrifying, though I had to admit he was also good-looking and obviously far from stupid. “I know you,” he said, staring at my face and trying to place it.
“Not really,” I said. “Not in the personal sense.”
It clicked, and he nodded. “I’ve seen you in the halls of my office. You work for me.”
“Again, not really. I work for someone who works for someone who works for you. Or there are a few more layers in there. Who knows?”
He looked like he was considering firing not only me, but whoever had hired me. “What do you do for me?”
I stepped closer to the curb, avoiding the flow of Manhattan pedestrians, who were looking annoyed at the two of us standing here. “I’m the office supply girl,” I said. “Actually, office supply person, since girl is politically incorrect. At least for you. I’m probably allowed to say it.”
“Do you always talk this much, Office Supply Person?”
“Only when I’m nervous. Which I already was, because I’m on my way to see the guy who broke my heart ten years ago. I mean, really broke it. So I’m nervous about that. But seeing you makes me even more nervous.”
Mr. Morgan scowled harder, which I hadn’t thought possible until that moment. He ignored my verbal vomit about my personal life. “I make you nervous.”
“Sir, you make everyone nervous,” I said. “The assistants, the accountants, even the janitors. Literally everyone.”
“People need to have a stronger backbone,” Mr. Morgan said. “My secretaries are particularly weak. The other day one of them said she was going to the ladies’ room and never came back.” He shook his head. “Well, Office Supply Person, I won’t fire you for bumping into me because I’m in a good mood today.”
The words were out before I could think better of them. “This is a good mood?”
Mr. Morgan’s eyes narrowed again. “Don’t push it.”
Right. Job, paycheck, rent payments, food. I needed those things. “Sorry. I apologize for bumping into you. Have a nice evening, Mr. Morgan.”
He was already walking away. Talk about arrogant.
The encounter with Mr. Morgan had made me five minutes late. I peered around the dim pub-style restaurant, looking for Holden. He wasn’t here.
He wasn’t here.
Don’t panic, Mina.
I wasn’t going to feel bad. I wasn’t going to be that teenage girl again, standing at the top of the stairs in her dress, afraid to sit down because it would put wrinkles in the belly of the skirt, wondering when the guy she’d been secretly crushing on for years would show up. Another five minutes? Another five? I wouldn’t be that girl getting pitying looks from her mother, trying not to cry because it would make her mascara run—
“Mina.”
I turned. There was Holden, coming through the door. His hair was mussed and he looked frazzled, as if he’d been rushing. I dropped my gaze and realized he was wearing his navy blue EMT uniform.
For a second I was speechless, because he looked hot in that uniform. Then I remembered Taken Hard by the EMT and I felt my throat choke up in embarrassment. Then I remembered that he’d said today was his day off.